


A Practical Guide to Good

by Droughtbringer



Category: A Practical Guide to Evil - erraticerrata
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 17:20:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17248292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Droughtbringer/pseuds/Droughtbringer
Summary: Based off of the White Knight from Three Fold crossing, instead of The Black Knight saving Catherine Foundling in the alleyway, a certain Hero shows up first.





	A Practical Guide to Good

**Author's Note:**

> Well, because I can't think of anywhere else to post this, I'll just drop the text here. Only about 1300 of the words here are mind, and the rest are taken directly from chapters (Book 1, Chapter 1) Knife, (Book 3, Chapter 65) Ellison, (Book 1, Chapter 7) Sword, (Book 1, Chapter 11) Sucker Punch, (Book 1, Chapter 12) Squire, and (Book 3, Heroic Interlude) Appellant.Not my best work, but I hope you all enjoy.

. . .

_Why couldn’t I have been born a reasonable girl?_

I had no intention of scrapping with a man in armour at least a foot taller than me, but I might be able to get the other girl and run if I played this right. Unlike the guard I didn’t carry a weapon, but if I hit him hard and fast I might knock him out before it ever turned into a struggle. Reckless, maybe, but what was I supposed to do – just cover my ears and go on my merry way? I stepped into the alley as silently as I could, catching sight of a ramshackle crate full of rotting cabbage as I did. My fingers closed against the edge of it and I closed the remaining distance separating me from the guard in a handful of steps, swinging the crate into the back of his head. It broke with a satisfying crunch, putting him down as the girl he’d been pushing himself onto let out a fresh new shriek of terror. I kicked the guard in the chin to make sure he wouldn’t get back up. The girl in the ripped-up blouse was backing away from me, apparently as scared of me as she was of her tormentor. A pointless gesture, that: the alley ended in a wooden wall, there was nowhere to go but through me.

“I’m here to help,” I told her soothingly. “Come with me, we need to get out of here before-”

I never got to finish the sentence, as a vicious hit to the temple sending me tumbling to the ground. The world spun but I tried to push myself up only to come face to face with a bared blade. I looked up into the eyes of a second guard, this one wearing sergeant stripes on his shoulders. His face was grim as he kept the tip of his short sword less than an inch away from my throat.

“Joseph,” he said calmly, “are you all right?”

The man I’d hit with the crate rolled over with a groan, getting back on his feet gingerly.

“The bitch did a number on me,” he spat. “That’s going to leave a bruise for sure.”

“Be glad she wasn’t carrying a knife, you idiot,” he retorted.

“He was trying to rape the girl,” I wheezed. “Why the Hells am I the one getting hit?”

A flash of disgust went through the sergeant’s face, but he refused to meet my eyes.

“You said you’d stop doing shit like this,” he spoke, ignoring me in favour of staring down his colleague. “You promised, Joseph.”

‘Joseph’ waved him off.

“No one would have cared if she hadn’t run into me, Allen,” he replied. “We can just break a few fingers to teach them manners and go home, our patrol is almost done.”

The sergeant – Allen, apparently – sighed.

“Look at her blouse, Joseph. That’s the heraldry for the Imperial orphanage sewed up over her chest. She shows up home with broken fingers and people are going to ask questions,” he said.

The would-be rapist’s eyes widened in fear.

“Fuck,” he cursed again. “What do we do? I can’t go to jail, who’s going to feed my kids? Bessie doesn’t even have a job.”

I snuck a glance towards the girl. She was huddled in a corner, shaking life a leaf and trying to hold her ripped clothes together. There was an absent look in her eyes, like she was there but not really there. No help coming from that direction, then. This… wasn’t looking too good.

“We’ll have to kill them,” the sergeant said flatly. “No blades, that would lead to too many questions. We came across their bodies during patrol, no witnesses and no suspects.”

And the Hells with that. I moved fast, slapping away the hand that held the sword as I tried to hoist myself back up to my feet. It loosened his grip but he rammed the cross guard of the sword into my shoulder – I was already halfway up by then so it staggered me back a step, screwing up my footing. I tried to push down the panic welling up in my chest, but the awareness that I was stuck in a dead-end alley with two armed men larger and stronger than me wasn’t exactly helping. I scratched the sergeant’s face as he tried to wrestle me down, my nails drawing blood on his face and a hiss of pain from his lips. It wasn’t enough: he’d dropped his sword at some point and he slammed me against the wall, forcing down my struggling hands and moving his legs so that I couldn’t get a decent angle to kick him.

“Joseph,” the man said in strained voice. “Get the other one. But first promise me this is the last time. We can’t keep on doing this.”

Joseph licked his lips, nodding nervously.

“Yeah, it’s the last time,” he muttered. “I mean, I didn’t want anyone to get killed over this.”

A moment later the sergeant’s hand settled on my throat and started to squeeze. I tried to punch him and wrestle away his hand, but he was stronger than me and I was trying to breathe but-

“Should never have stepped into the alley, girl,” Allen said. “These aren’t days for playing hero.”

“No.” A voice said, as a keening blade emerged from Allen’s chest. “These are the days for being a Hero.”

There was a streak of movement, as Allen’s body dropped to the ground, and the blade flashed through the air, neatly decapitating Joseph before he could react.

I gulped in a mouthful of air greedily, coughing a handful of times before I was finally self-possessed enough to look around me.

 _Oh. Gag me._  I was grateful for being saved and all, but did this guy really believe that he was a-

 _Hero._  My mind practically screamed the word as I looked at him.He couldn’t have been much older than seventeen, darkly handsome with messy black hair and vivid green eyes. His face was one made for brooding, all angles and windswept locks, and his long brown leather coat did nothing to detract from that impression.

_Seriously, a leather coat? Does he want everyone to know that he was a Hero?_

“Thank you,” I croaked out at the Hero. “I thought I was done for.”

He turned and looked at me, his vivid green eyes meeting my own. I had seen other green eyes, but none quite as vivid as his. There was no denying the touch of strangeness to him. He hadn’t even replied but just the weight of his attention made me feel like a rabbit in front of a wolf, like my life could be snatched right out of me in the blink of an eye. I guess some people would be cowed by that, but I’ve always hated feeling afraid. The other girls at the orphanage had never understood why I kept going up to the roof and standing on the edge when everybody knew I was afraid of heights, but they were missing the point. I’d kept going because I was afraid, and I’d refused to stop even when they’d started whispering to each other about how I was going to turn into a gargoyle if I kept standing there glaring at the ground. I wasn’t fool enough to think that fighting through a childish fear of heights and staring down the smiling monster in front of me was the same, but the principle was the same. My fear did not own me – I owned it.

His mouth began to open, as if to say something, but before he could, there was a faint whizzing sound. The Hero reflexively leaned backwards, a crossbow bolt scratching a line across his cheek, drawing a faint line of blood.

He spun towards the entrance to the alleyway, his blade rising upwards in a stance that I didn’t recognize.

At the mouth of the alleyway, two figures stood, cloaked in shadow, one a gargantuan woman, or at least shaped like one. She stood at least three feet taller than I, and at least twice as wide, while the other was pale skinned, and decked in unadorned steel plate. He scanned the alleyway, for a moment, his eerie pale green eyes meeting my own. His eyes were as pale as the Hero’s were vivid.

“Monster.” The Hero stated.

The monster did not respond moving forward, shield raised, sword at the ready, while the behemoth moved forwards behind him, the two of them moving together in near perfect unison.

The shadows around the monster began to twist and contort slightly as I took a half step back, feeling my stomach twist in unashamed fear, as I realized who was standing in front of me.

The Black Knight.

I was less than ten feet away from the godsdamned boogeyman. Shit, of all the people who could have walked into the alley. The green-eyed man had a body count that would make most butchers retch – there wasn’t a man or woman in Callow that didn’t know the Name. And if that was really the Captain following behind him, then I was all sorts of screwed: the stories said she’d once killed an ogre with a single hammer stroke. Gods, looking at her now she had to be at least eight feet tall.

The Black Knight was still at least 7 feet away from the Hero and I, when suddenly he wasn’t.

With a blur of movement, the Black Knight was right in front of the Hero, stabbing his blade out in a quick lunge almost too fast the track. The Hero backpedaled, knocking the blade away with his own.

The Hero swung his longsword, as it glinted off of an unseen light, directly towards the Black Knight’s face.

Halfway through the swing, Captain brought her Hammer down, forcing the Hero to abort the swing, and dance further back down the alleyway to avoid the swing. Captain’s hammer smashed into the ground, cracking the pavement and sending a visible shudder through my body.

The Hero was on the defensive, being forced back, towards the alleyway, yet still blocking or avoiding blows from both Villains.

Now is my chance to run. I thought, my eyes moving off of the battle going on at the end of the alleyway, and slipped down to the still-cooling dead body of the Sergeant who had almost killed me.

 _You’ll just die like everyone else who has ever tried to do anything._  My mind screamed, as I bent over the Sergeant's body, searching for something that I could use to defend myself if - when - worse came to worse.

I paused at his sword, but decided against it. I had not trained with it, and would be about as effective as a stick in my hands. Next to his sword was a small sheath was a knife in it, and I quickly pulled it out and turned back towards the fighting.

The Hero was now backed up against the wall, his parries becoming more frantic as he ran out of room to move. The Black Knight struck forward, and the Hero swung his blade as it began to let out a loud keen as the edge of the blade flashed red. I flinched out the sound, at the wrongness of it, as it connected with the Black Knight’s blade, and sheared through the metal, half of it falling to the ground with a loud clang.

The Hero stood there, a slight smile creasing his lips, as he continued the swing, and sheared through the handle of Captain’s hammer as well.

The Hero brought the blade up, the keening sound getting louder to an almost unbearable volume.

The Villains were both defenseless, the Hero posed to strike, and, as everything should have started going in the Hero’s favor, it got worse.

A tendril of shadow sprouted from The Black Knight’s back, and wrapped around the now separated end of his blade, and stabbed it upwards, neatly severing the Heroes’ hand.

The blade stopped keening as it dropped to the ground with a dull clang, accompanied by the fleshy sound of the Hero’s hand doing the same.

The Hero stared blankly at his hand for a moment, as The Black Knight bent down to pick up the Hero’s fallen blade, moving methodically, while the Captain kept an eye on the Hero, prepared to stop him from doing anything.

The Black Knight brought the blade up, the horrible keening slowly building towards a crescendo.

You are going to die! Part of me screamed, as another part of me retorted with You owe him a debt!

I stood, paralyzed for a second, before dashing forward, swinging the knife around with an awkward swing, to hit the Black Knight in the neck.

The Black Knight turned around, his pale green eyes widening slightly, as I drove the knife towards him. He twisted out of the way, my blade instead slamming against his collar bone, jarring my arm as it impacted the bone.

The Hero chose that moment to act, feinting a punch towards Captain, before diving at The Black Knight, and managing to rip the blade out of the Villain’s hand.

I turned to run, accompanied by the Hero, and risked a glance backwards.

Captain said a word under her breath, and her body began to twist into an abomination, and the shadows in the alley began to twist towards The Black Knight as an oppressive weight fell upon me.

I stumbled under the weight, but somehow managed to keep pace with the Hero, the knife still clutched in my hand.

We came to an alleyway where the Hero paused, as a howl echoed through the night behind us.

I met his eyes, and saw an uncertainty there, and quickly took the lead, dashing through the streets of Laure like it was second nature.

We hit the city gates where the Hero made quick work of any of the guards who put up resistance, and left the city of Laure, the only place that I had called home.

The city slowly dwindled behind us, a hulking beast and a small man silhouetted against the walls, watching our escape, but not chasing.

At last I stopped gasping for breath, the City of Laure just a faint line on the horizon. The monsters won there, and maybe they always would, but as I looked around the fields around me more open than I had ever experienced in my life, and, for the first time, felt free.

I turned to the Hero who was also gasping for breath. My knife still clasped in my hand, his sword still in his. I met those vivid green eyes, both of us still breathing hard and smiled.

“So,” I asked, “did that all go according to your plan?”


End file.
